Hi Dad,
It is time to address the last sticking point in my transition. I don’t need to remind you that I am making the single biggest step in this journey in three weeks (and yes, I’m absolutely certain). If required, I will go into greater detail, but you don’t want that and I’m not excited to have to.
I have pretty much always identified as female. Cis-gender. I have never thought about anything else, really. I have never been aware that there are other options out there, much less considered them. But I’ve also been on the tomboy side of female, right from the get-go. I hung out with boys, I beat up boys, I followed boys into the bathroom and watched them pee. I really really wanted a penis, and I tried as hard as I could to grow one. I remember when I was little I’d sit in the passenger seat of the car as I went with one of my parents on an errand-running mission, and I would feel a certain friction between my legs or against my groin from the way I was sitting on the seat, the way the seatbelt fit or my pants were tugging, and imagine a penis growing between my legs.
Ugh. Stop. Seriously, stop. I don’t get why people keep asking why I’m depressed, or what I have to be depressed over. Really, it’s a dumb question. Ok, though, in fairness, maybe it’s not actually their fault – society is probably to blame here. People say that something is depressing, or they’re depressed, and what they really mean is that something happened, and it sucks, it’s a bummer, they’d prefer it didn’t happen.
Trigger Warning: for those afraid of needles.
I have a fear of needles.
It is a pretty common fear. It kind of makes sense. I mean, needles do hurt, often just a tiny bit and but sometimes quite a lot, depending on what they’re doing. Plus, they invade some of the most private parts of our bodies and remove parts of us or put new things inside of us. It’s creepy. And people don’t always ask permission before they put needles inside us (although they almost always should). Needles can help us, but they can also harm us and/or reveal things about us that we may not wholly want to know. Needles can be violating.
“Living from check to check” is a common phrase in today’s society and economy. In virtually every country in the world today, and particularly in the United States, and whichever state you live in here, the number of people who survive ‘check to check’ has skyrocketed. Not only do I really live check to check, but I live… no, survive from event to event in my life.
Editor’s note: this is a continuation of Fuck. Schizoaffective?
It’s been two months since my diagnosis. Two months to process the psychosis, the diagnosis. Two months to adjust to new medication.
During my last session with my psychiatrist, I was being “very honest and open” according to my doctor, “like never before.” I don’t like to think I hold back, but I do. I guess this particular visit I was sort of worn down, and more than a little tired, so I wasn’t thinking ahead of the curve of my brain/mouth filter. Truth was just sort of spilling out.
Some might say that religion is just a manifestation of mental illness (I’m looking at you, Richard Dawkins), or literally call your religious beliefs “crazy.” When you think about it, it is actually pretty crazy to literally believe that a man can walk on water, or that G-d speaks through a burning bush, or that […]
My first experience drinking beer (well, aside from the time my mother’s brother gave me a drink when I was like five telling me it was soda – I spit it back out on him) was at a neighbor’s party when I was 20 or so. Up until that point, I’d never had a beer, and didn’t even like the smell of it. Over the next year and a half of knowing him, I found an affinity for beer, in relatively limited quantities, anyway.
In late June of 2010 our last child, a boy, was born. I could sense the distance between my wife and myself growing even further. Intimacy was non-existent, and she could barely stand to touch me now that I clearly had breasts. I had been blaming it on the pregnancy, but the gulf was widening, and I had no idea how much she really knew (which was in reality almost all of it). I was careless, barely even hiding it because she was so conspicuously ignoring it. At home, I was short fused and out of control, although less so since I quit the reserves.
