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.
Three years ago, when I FINALLY got some psychiatric help for an episode that was already almost a year old at that point (thanks for nothing), my then-psychiatrist diagnosed me with panic disorder/agoraphobia, OCD, Borderline Personality Disorder, depressive disorder, dissociative disorder, and Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. Believe it or not, I was okay with that. It gave me something to hold onto, because I couldn’t make sense out of what was happening to me anymore. By the time I got in to see him, it was already too late. The damage was done. I will never fully recover. It’s not pessimism, just plain fact. Too much has happened to me, and rearranged my brain and how I perceive things.
Trigger Warning: Self-Harm, Abuse, Rape, Human Trafficking
I’ve been half-aware that I’m multiple since about the age of fourteen, when I started to realise that it really wasn’t usual for people to experience severe blackouts and time loss and memory issues (lasting hours, days, weeks, months and even years); that it wasn’t usual for people to so routinely and constantly be addressed by a completely different name by strangers who will insist that you have met them and that your name is something else; that it wasn’t usual for moods and personalities and tastes to change so drastically and so constantly. I had no word for what I was experiencing; I had no knowledge and no understanding and after about a year of being so, so aware of this I finally told my (then) therapist about those experiences. The result? A long lecture about self-diagnosis and “making up more lies to make my supposed PTSD more believable” followed by being asked about where I had researched Dissociative Identity Disorder and that I did know that it was made up and not real and that nobody would ever believe me. So, for almost ten years I hid it except from a very close friend online and one of my partners (he lived with me so it was very difficult to hide).
I would like to welcome the newest member of our writing team, Starfish. In her first post with us, she tells us her coming out story. Thanks for sharing with us, Starfish!
When I decided to confide my doubts about my sexuality to my mother when I was 13 years old, I had a vague idea of how she would respond. She had always impressed upon me that discrimination was bad and that homosexuality was ok and not to be made fun of. When I choked out, ‘I think I might be bisexual’, I thought she’d be surprised. Maybe ask if there was a certain girl I liked.
I have struggled with identity all my life. One word to describe me, one concept or community that I could cling on to and immerse myself in. Kind, intelligent, giving. Bipolar, female, gay. Of course nothing encapsulated me, described me wholly, no matter how hard I tried to identify. I needed definitions, definitions of me.
I never wanted to be a mother when I was young. Seduced by the freedom I could have as a single woman, at varying levels of “being about to take care of myself” financially and psychologically, I pushed onward. When I was 19 and in college I had an abortion. The father was irresponsible and unemployed, and I wanted to graduate. I wanted to live an exciting, satisfying life and knew if I kept the child I would be doomed to poverty and single-mother-dom before I had even gotten started.
I have no beautiful words to share or anything to make the pressing issue of coming out an easier one. I have nothing to offer but the advice I have been given and continue to follow in protection of myself.
It is very much okay to stay in. It is very much okay to find safety in the proverbial closet. Staying in, is in itself, sometimes needed for survival. It is okay to keep your sexuality/lack thereof, gender/lack thereof, tucked away and safe within your chest.
Trigger Warning: mention of abuse
When I was a freshman in high school, my English teacher assigned the first essay of the semester. The topic was “time I felt different”. This proved to be a surprisingly difficult topic for me to write about. Why? Then, I had no idea what it was like to fit in. I had no frame of reference.
I would like to welcome the newest member of our writing team, Yael Cohen. In her first post with us, she tells her story of battling with depression. Thanks for sharing with us, Yael!
Trigger Warnings: Suicidal ideation, rape, sexual assault
I havent always been this way, when I was younger I like to think I was a pretty normal, what we would now refer to as a gender fluid child. I was born with an intersex spectrum disorder. My depression started when I was about eight, as at the time I was being raped by a family “friend.” This would lead later to a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (at age 9) and Major Depressive Illness (at age 16) after a stay in the psychiatric ward for suicidal ideation. To top it off I spent much of my formative years in hospitals as I was born with several problems physically. Just to add to my depressed mood.
