A realization and...me!

[Asako]

First off, allow me to share a few links.

Guess who! (http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/6378/0406121747.jpg)
That's right! (http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/6633/0406121746.jpg)
It's me! (http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/8941/0406121738.jpg)

And a random sketch of mine. (http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/962/08301107420001.jpg)

What prompted this? A short exchange between me and another forum member and a very powerful realization. I had a post ready to go about 20 minutes ago but Windows decided that was the perfect time to reboot with new updates to install DESPITE THE FACT that I have Windows Update set to never install anything without my ok. ^.^ So, I will try again with how I tried to convey this realization.

It occurred in the shower, of all places. When I first get in, I like to curl up in the corner and feel the water from the shower head rain down on me. It's relaxing in a way. As I relaxed and closed my eyes, I tried something that had worked once before. I told myself it was ok to drop the barriers. To be truthful to myself. It was a spur of the moment decision and I'll explain where the "It's ok to-" thing came from at the end of this.

The end result of that was a bit more powerful than I expected. The barriers did drop and with the thoughts that came, I was blindsided by a realization. I've let my own limitations restrain me and set myself up to fail at just about everything.

The stories I try writing, the game projects that I start to work on, the website I've slowly worked on, my playing of drums, transition progress, etc. I've set myself up to fail on so much. My family was right all along. I do limit myself and now that I see it too, I have to agree. It's a sad thing to see.

After seeing how I've held myself back from so much, all I could do was lay in the corner of the stand-up shower and hold myself while holding back a cry of emotional pain and turmoil as the realization worked itself over in my mind.

As for where the "It's ok to-" thing came from, it came from my uncle-in-law's mom during my great-granddad's funeral. I drifted through the services and the burial without feeling much of anything other than an occasional image in my mind that I wish I had the skill to draw and color well. I held my tears in without knowing it until that sweet woman approached me, looked me in the eyes, and told me that it was ok to cry if I wanted to. A second later, the flood gates opened and I cried into her shoulder as she hugged me. I held back so much without realizing it that I had to be told it was ok to cry if I wanted to. Since then, off and on, I've used that same process

I've slowly come to realize that I have quite a few barriers and problems outside of my gender issues. Thank you therapist of mine for being there to help me find them and work them out. I'd be lost without her. Don't believe me? Look back at my November posts.

It's kind of odd to have a clear clarity to things. Especially when it has come from inside.

[kimdl93]

So, where will this realization and clarity lead you?

[KellyJameson]

Beautiful words Asako, many go to the grave without finding the courage and wisdom to learn how to be real (natural) and to stop acting how they think they are suppose to act according to all the rules put in their head. We build our own prisons but others hand us the bricks. Remember there is only one path to success and that is by failing because from this we learn the most important lessons but this takes the courage to fail and the learned wisdom to understand why failure is good. Pain is not always a bad thing and pleasure is not always a good thing.

Your thread is inspiring, thank you very much for sharing.

[Asako]

@kim:Where will it lead? Immediately towards taking better care of myself, that's for sure. Let me rephrase that. "to start taking care of myself" is where it will lead. To define that: Hair care, hygiene, showers, etc. are now mandatory. Yes, that's how far I fell. I basically stopped taking of myself all together while trying to recede from reality. That's one thing I've been battling for almost a month now:The need to stay connected to reality and actually physically LIVE instead of doing so in fantasy and/or virtual places. That's the extent that my mental defense mechanisms have gone to try and "preserve and save" my life. So to speak. It makes me wonder though. What caused those mental defenses to form in the first place?

@kelly:Not moving in any direction. That is my biggest enemy in this fight in learning to actually LIVE instead of just existing. After all, how can you fail or make a mistake if you're not doing anything? That was the most often thing I would tell employees on my shifts when they'd make mistakes. How ironic is it that applies to the way I "exist" so to speak? I say "exist" instead of "existed" because the battle hasn't been won by a long shot. When Julia posted her quote from the Velveteen Rabbit, she spoke truth.

[ReineD]

Yes, that's how far I fell. I basically stopped taking of myself all together while trying to recede from reality.

Asako, this is just a suggestion, but you might also want to talk to a doctor about depression?

I was depressed for years, having similar symptoms to yours, without ever realizing it. My depressed state had become "my normal". If you cannot maintain the changes you feel you need to make for an extended period of time, you might consider talking to a professional, if only to rule out anti-depressants.

[Asako]

Aye Reine. I have been depressed for a good few years. It links back to my gender confusion. Currently, my therapist and I are examining my patterns of behavior and reactions to the possibilities of how others react and how that in turn impacts me. Our current goal is identify and eliminate the destructive ones and encourage the good ones. One such thing was identifying the strengths of my personality and playing off them. Generosity is one of those strengths. O

ne such moment that comes to mind when I think about that is when a friend of mine lost his unemployment income from his previous employer. He fell into a deep depression right after it. His wife called me and asked if there was anything I could do to get him out of the house to help him take his mind off of his new-found financial worries and woes. Knowing that they were both losing weight from having enough money to always eat when they were hungry, I took them out to a steak house. Yes, it was a $50 bill for food but the price tag doesn't(and didn't at the time) concern me. What matters to me about that moment in my life is that I helped my friends get out of their predicament for a short period of time so that when they turned to face it after dinner, they were renewed by a good meal that they hadn't been able to have(READ:afford) for a long time.

For the first time in over a year, I can FEEL the music again within my soul and it feels WONDERFUL. This is a feeling I wish I could share with the world. To me, music is an idea in the form of sound and ideas affect us all on deeply personal levels.

EDIT:I just realized I skimmed over Reine's concern and then moved right along. Like I said, yes I have been depressed for some years. Again, it links back to gender confusion. I'm not quite sure how anti-depressants would help in the area of maintaining changes. True, I constantly split my attention between 2-10 things at a time. It's the only way I can really function on a mental level. Sometimes, the focus of my thoughts shift entirely into another direction. Sometimes, it's my "defenses" kicking in and trying to distract me. Other times, it's just as a way to keep myself from being BORED with just one thing. That's why I tend to do things like developing a game(think simple graphics, no 3D stuff) on my own. I shift around from coding to writing to character development to monster creation. I switch around to so many things that it constantly keeps me engaged. My writing follows the same pattern. Each character in a story, a part of their personality comes from something or someone(fictional or real) that has been a part of my life. Little bits of things around me come together to form things. As I just realized while typing this out, the entirety of my edit basically did just that. A little bit of everything so to speak.

[KellyJameson]

Hi Asako

I spent my childhood being hated for the way I was born but not understanding why. Eventually I became terrirfied of life because there was no place I could go where I was sure I would not encounter people, where I could feel safe. I became frozen by social anxiety always living in fear of the next cruel criticism casually thrown my way or worse. The fear was like a heavy blanket that suffocated hope that things would get better. I spent many years staying alive only because I was afraid to die and for nothing else. I felt like the clock was ticking and someday I would reach a point where I was not afraid to die and that would be it. I had to find an escape from the damage done to me by others that had immersed me into the quicksand of my fears that were slowly pulling me down. Often I would live between life and death where I wanted to die but did not have the will to kill myself. When people use the word depression this is what it means for me. Many of the things you mentioned like not bathing I can relate to.

Sometimes trauma can happen in a moment like rape other times it is stretched over a lifetime but often the results are similar, you become imprisoned by the experience and it steals your will to live because there is no hope for happiness only the expectation of more pain.

Life is a choice that must be fought for but the problem is finding reasons to fight. When you live opposed to the world not by choice but by design you carry a burden much like someone with a physical handicap but they at least find peace in the knowledge to point at their affliction and say to themselves and the world, see here is my problem. They are able to understand the reason for their difficulty but gender dysphoria is invisible and worse it mimics in the behavior it causes many other reasons that this behavior could be caused by adding to the confusion of self understanding, self knowledge. self identity so you float through live like a boat with no rudder unable to steer a course.

For me gender dysphoria is like God, I know they both exist because I feel it inside me but I cannot prove it to others. For me what made the difference is I finally became angry at the injustice of how I had been treated for no fault of my own. I did not pour this anger onto others thus repeating the crime done to me instead I directed it at my fears and would verbally chastise myself, I became the loving parent to myself that I never had.

Slowly, ever so slowly I found reasons to get out of bed and in time I stopped being so afraid and actually started to look forward to what life could and would bring.

I had to find a different path to give me reasons to want to live because the dysphoria is so extreme that physical intimacy is all but impossible for me. My live has accidentally ended up being kind of fun and interesting once I stopped trying to find happiness in the ways everyone else does but I must admit if I had not feared death to the degree I did I would not be here to write these words. I understand the feeling of being exhausted to the point of wanting to die and in those moments only my fear kept me alive and I'm very glad for that fear even though I cursed it at the time.

Clarity is a wonderful experiece, for me it feels like a healing not of all the wounds but I at least felt like I was on the path to recovery, moving in the right direction. Remember that feeling in those moments when you wonder if it ever happened. It is real and there will be more to come and occasionally get angry at the world and shake your fist but use that anger to build your life not destroy anothers.

I understand your feelings about music. Music is one of many things that give me a reason to live.

[Julia_in_Pa]

Asako,

Clarity is what most people have but very few unearth and acknowledge.
Layers of denial are very difficult to dig through in order for clarity to be exposed.
Once you have found clarity you will only be hindered by your perceptions of what success and failure are within the context of the issue your working on.
Congratulations Asako.


Julia

[Kaitlyn Michele]

Progress progress progress...

This is great progress...I am very happy for you!!

When I had one of my breakthroughs I took a deep breath, and just savored the moment while it felt good...

Knowing depression and GID, you won't have to try very hard for feelings to come back at you...but now you have a new superpower, which is self knowledge and you have lots of sidekicks here to help you too..

[Inna]

Hi sweetie, letting go seems so intense and horrid, to let go the grip we falsely think of as a security, but contrary to our belief, letting go brings on a fall into a most wonderful of falls, a flight of a free soul amongst anew and vast space of truth.

Sure it is unthinkable to jump of the cliff of solid ground into the abyss of unknown, but this solid ground is built of garbage heap, rotting beneath our feet and doing the same to us slowly over time. As we fall, the discovery of letting go of the pretense of life's treacherous confines and conformity to standards, lets us truly absorb the beauty and freedom of SELF, yet not without pain and discomfort, but true and wholesome just the same.

So, I wish you such fall, into wonders this place has to offer, life can be, beautiful as we all are within, but so often denied experience of becoming!

[Jorja]

Asako, I want to share with you something that happened some 40 years ago as I was trying to find out who I was. I was seeing a therapist as you are now. I was talking to others just as you are now.

You are not the first to curl up in a corner of the shower and just let the water rain over you. It is very relaxing. I closed my eyes and just let everything go. The reasons for holding myself back flooded forth. The limitations for failure were abundant. I could clearly see how and why I set myself up for failure no matter what it was. There was no one there to interrupt me so I did cry. I cried so hard and long, I must have looked like a prune before I got out of that shower.

The thing is now, what are you going to do about those things and reasons that have held you back? I took action and worked to not set myself up like that again. I started doing the things I needed to do to be a success at everything I did. That wonderful feeling of music in my soul became a full blown concert and I have lived like it was never going to stop.

Even after the man I loved and lived for died unexpectedly, I knew I would go on and continue to succeed because I had learned how from those few fleeting moments in a shower all those years ago. Today I am successful, have more than I ever thought I would or could, and life is great.

[Asako]

what are you going to do about those things and reasons that have held you back?I'm going to keep examining my actions in search of my destructive habits. When I can recognize them, I will put a stop to them until it becomes a habit not to be self destructive. I already know where I can go for study classes for my GED. I talked to the instructor and got the number for a place nearby that does GED testing that's used by a large number of her students as well. That's the second thing to fix that I've avoided doing. The first is quite simply taking care of myself again.

[KellyJameson]

Thanks again for your thread Asako, it started me thinking and clarified why I struggled with taking good care of my body/health for many years and I see now it was the sadness of not having a female body that contributed to my indifference in taking care of the one I had, fortunately these were harmless acts like poor diet and hygenine and I did not do permanent damage. I thought I was just being lazy but the reasons went deeper and the more I accepted who and what I was the greater my interest in taking care of myself both mind and body. GID is insidious when you do not understand the ramifications of it, we look at hate of ones genitals as an example but it goes way beyond that and touches every moment and corner of ones life.

[Jorja]

I'm going to keep examining my actions in search of my destructive habits. When I can recognize them, I will put a stop to them until it becomes a habit not to be self destructive. I already know where I can go for study classes for my GED. I talked to the instructor and got the number for a place nearby that does GED testing that's used by a large number of her students as well. That's the second thing to fix that I've avoided doing. The first is quite simply taking care of myself again.

That is a very good place to start!